/''•s<p- COLLECTIONS OF CORRESPONDENCE AND MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENTS George VERNADSKY Papers NAME OF COLLECTION: SOURCE: Gift of George & Nina Vernadsky, 1953-57, 1959-62, 1965, 1968; bequest of George Vernadsky, 1973; gift of Nina V. Toll, 1975-76 j: gift of Peter K. Christoff, SUBJECT:Emigration — Europe, United States; Slavic & Russian Studies in Europe & the United States; History; Emigre Scholars; Science in the Soviet Union; Eurasianism DATES COVERED: 46th-20th centuries NUMBER OF ITEMS: ca. 80,000 Gotrety. STATUS: ((chec k appropriatppp e descriptionp) ) ' W^ba^,, M, ( Cataloged: x Listed: xArranged: x Not organized: 0*t MICMICROFILR M CONDITION: (give number of vols., boxes, or shelves) Bound: Boxed: %y-\ Stored: \ oversized folders. $ l^ox glass negatives LOCATION: (Library) BAR CALL-NU/v\btK Ms Coll/Vernadsky RESTRICTIONS ON USE (^yte^mimg trM ^mJro (hnhMkUu M MX;], o£~ // np_r Correspond'ence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, subject files, DESCRIPTION: printed materials, and memorabilia of historian George Vernadsky (Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadskii; 1887-1973). Most of the collection consists of his personal and professional papers, ca. 1918-73. Sizable groups of materials also concern members of his family, especially his wife Nina (1881+-1971); his father, scientist Vladimir I. Vernadskii (1863-19^5); his mother Nataliia E. Vernadskaia (1860-19^3); and his sister Nina V. Toll (1898-ca. 1976). Cataloged correspondents include: (to George and Nina Vernadsky) Boris Bakhmeteff, Roman Jakobson, Mikhail Karpovich, Nikolai Losskii, Vladimir Nabokov, Sergei Rakhmaninov, Geroid T. Robinson, Mikhail Rostovtsev, Petr Savitskii, and Aleksandr Vasil'ev; (to Vladimir Vernadskii) Henri Bergson and Petr Struve; and Ivan Turgenev. There are a great many letters by George and Nina Vernadskyfs colleagues, friends, and relatives, including many historians, and members of the Bromberg, Il'inskii, Rodichev, Romberg, and Staritskii families. There are also many letters from Vladimir and Nataliia Vernadskii to their children. Other sizable groups of letters by various persons vere written to Vladimir and Nataliia Vernadskii in 1888-96 and in the 1920s and 30s, when they were staying intermittantly in Western Europe; and to members of the Staritskii family, cousins of George Vernadsky. A number of files concern George Vernadsky's professional contacts with journals, conferences, organizations, and publishers, in the fields of Russian, Byzantine, and Asian history. Manuscripts consist chiefly of George Vernadsky's articles, lectures, essays, books, and notes, although there are also items by others, such as Iurii Arbatskii, Iakov Bromberg, Loren Graham, Petr Savitskii, and Vladimir Vernadskii. OVER D3078)M Vernadsky description continued: Photographs are chiefly of George and Nina Vernadsky and their friends and relations. Subject files deal primarily with George Vernadsky's professional activities in Europe?and America (for instance, "Eurasianism," the Kondakov Institute in Prague, Yale University, and various conferences and associations), and with his parents, other relatives, and many other aspects of his life and career. In addition, there are several "boxes of records, primarily l6th and 17th century stolbtsy, relating to the history of the Tambov-Penza region of Russia; these appear in the collection as "Akty Tambovsko-Penzenskego kraia." Besides many boxes of offprints, journals, clippings, and pamphlets on scholarly topics which George Vernadsky collected, printed items mostly concern his and his father's activities. SC 10-82 For biographical information and box list see REGISTER. C Publications based on the George Vernadsky Papers Magocsi, Paul R. The Russian .Americans. New York, Chelsea House, 1989. Photograph on p. 71 "A picnic of Russian emigres- in the 1920's" from box 151, envelope 12. "Piatf "vol'nykh" pisem V.I. Vernadskogo synu (russkaia nauka v 1929) publikatsiia K.K." Minuvshee No. 7 (1989): pp. Letters from V.I."Vernadskii to G.V. Vernadsky from box 12. W.es, Marinus A. Michael Rdstovtzeff, Historian in Exile. Historia, Einzelschriften 65. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1990. Bailes, Kendall E. Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions V.I. Vernadsky arid His Scientific School, 1863-19^5. Bloomington: IU Presss 1990. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES: GEORGE VERNADSKY & VLADIMIR VERNADSKII George Vernadsky (Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadskii) was born on 20 August 1887 in St. Petersburg. His parents were Vladimir I. Vernadskii and Nataliia E. Vernadskaia, nee Staritskaia. He had one sister, Nina, who was born in 1898. George Vernadsky married his second cousin, Nina Vladimirovna Ilfinskaia, in 1908. They were to have no children. He graduated in history from Moscow University in 1910. He received a masterfs degree in history (equivalent to the American Ph.D.) from Petrograd University in 1917; his dissertation was, "Russkoe masonstvo v tsarstvovanii Ekateriny II." He was a private-docent at Petrograd University in 1913-17, a professor at Perm' University in 1917-18, and then at Tauride University in Simferopol' in 1918-20. He took little part in politics as a young man, but was a member of the liberal Kadet Partyin 1906-08 and 1917. In 1920 he was briefly head of the Press Department (Otdel Pechati) in General Wrangel's Crimean government. Through most of his life, however, he seems to have been a relentlessly non-political man. He and his wife left the Crimea at the time of the evacuation of Wrangel's army in November 1920. They spent several months in Istanbul, and 1921-22 in Athens. In 1922 they went to Prague, where he was a member of the Russkaia Uchebnaia Kollegiia and a professor at the Russkii Iuridicheskii Fakul'tet. He stayed there until 1927* While in Prague, he was a founding member of the Kondakov Institute. He also became intellectually and personally close with members of the Eurasianist movement, especially Petr Savitskii. He and his wife came to the United States in 1927, on the invitation of Yale University. He remained at Yale for the rest of his career, as a research associate until 19^-6 and then as a professor until 1956, when he retired, In this period he was also at times a guest lecturer and professor at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Western Reserve. Vernadsky's major field of research and teaching was medieval and early modern Russian history, but he also made significant contributions in the Asian and Byzantine areas. His best known works were his one-volume A History of Russia, which went through 5 editions, and five volumes of a projected 10-volume history of Russia. Among his long-term professional associations were the Kondakov Institute, the Medieval Academy of America, the American Historical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He died on 12 June 1973, two years after his wife. Major works: Russkoe masonstvo v tsarstvovanii Ekateriny II (1917) Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov (1918) Ocherk istorii prava russkago gosudarstva XVIII-XIX w. (192*0 Gosudarstvennaia ustavnaia gramota Rossiiskoi imperii 1920 goda; istoriko-iuridicheskii ocherk (1925) Nachertanie russkoi istorii (1927) A History of Russia (first edition 1929) Lenin, Red Dictator (1931) The Russian Revolution 1917-1931 (.1932) Opyt istorii Evrazii s poloviny VI veka do nastoiashchego vremeni (193*0 Political and Diplomatic History of Russia (1936) Zven'ia russkoi kul'tury (1938) Bohdan, Hetmaiix of Ukraine Ancient Russia (19^3) Medieval Russian Lavs Kievan Russia (19^8) The Mongols and Russia (1953) Russia at the Dawn of the Modern Age (1959) The Origins of Russia (1959) The Tsardom of Moscow (1969) A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917 (1972) Russian Historiography: A History (1978) Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadskii was born on 28 February 1863 in St. Petersburg; his father, Ivan V. Vernadskii (l821-l88^), was a professor of economics. Vladimir Vernadskii graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1885. He defended his master's dissertation in l891» and his doctorate (the European habilitation) 6 years later. In I89O he became a private-docent at Moscow University, and in 1898 a professor; he remained in that position until 1911* when he and many other professors lost their posts for political reasons. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg from 1906, a founder of the liberal Kadet Party, and also served on the State Council (Gosudarstvennyi Sovet). Vernadskii's main fields were mineralogy and crystallography, but his particular specialization has been described as biogeochemistry. His was a remarkable career, in that he was a distinguished scholar in both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, and well thought of also in the West. Vernadskii became the first head of the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He stayed in Western Europe through the mid-1920s, but then elected to return to the Soviet Union, where he and his wife remained except for several trips to the West. He kept up regular contact with his children, George Vernadsky and Nina Toll', both of whom emigrated to Europe and, eventually, to the United States. He received the Stalin Prize in 19^3. Vernadskii died on 6 January 19^5, two years after his wife, Nataliia, Some of his works have appeared in English and French as veil as in Russian, and selections of his writings have been published posthumously in the USSR. Boxes 1-13. Cataloged Correspondence (°denotes at least 1 letter by the person to Vladimir or Nataliia Vernadskii) 1. Aldanov, Mark Aleksandrovich Alekseev, Nikolai